


Smoke and Memories

by WonkyWarmaiden



Series: The Bad Old Days [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blind Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 21:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9289514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonkyWarmaiden/pseuds/WonkyWarmaiden
Summary: Jack remembers the old days.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is rambling and weird and the summary sucks but I hope y'all like it anyway.

Jack remembers the exact moment Gabe started to hate him. He hadn’t known it at the time but he remembers how the love had faded from Gabe’s eyes, replaced with the twisting jealousy that would eventually doom them both. 

When it’s quiet during downtime between missions Jack can hear the words that had caused the beginning of the end.

“Congratulations, Strike-Commander Morrison,” was all the representative from the UN had said but it was all she’d needed to say. Gabe’s mouth had tightened into a frown and he’d silently left the room. Jack had been too busy getting his hand shaken by various superiors to run after him.

He remembers talking to Ana about it, feeling guilty for taking the position from Gabe. Ana had just scoffed and shaken her head. “Gabriel will get over it. He loves you, Jack, more than anything,” she’d said. Jack wonders if she regrets believing that. Jack knows he does.

There had been no love in Gabe when he and Jack had come to blows, only vengeance and hatred, pouring out and choking Jack under a grip of steel amidst the crumbling concrete and billowing, black smoke of what was once the Zurich base. Jack still wakes up gasping and scraping at his throat to remove the strangling phantom hands that plague his dreams.

Not that waking up normally is much better. Even though he can’t see much without his visor, the barracks of the Gibraltar base haven’t changed. The cots, the lockers, the distant crash of waves, it’s all the same as when he and Gabe had been stationed at the Watchpoint all those years ago during the Omnic Crisis. They used to sneak out after dark to watch the boats coast by and share a bottle of whiskey, recalling the old days in SEP and talking about what they’d do if they lived through the war. 

Gabe had taken a swig of whiskey from the bottle and passed it to Jack. “We’re staying together, of course, you’re too stupid to leave alone. You’d be dead within a week,” he had said and the blush darkening his cheeks hadn’t been completely due to the alcohol.

Jack had just smiled like an idiot and taken a sip.

Gabe gave him a ring a few nights later, a plain gold band that meant the world to Jack. He remembers losing it a month later in a high-rise in India when his entire arm had gotten pinned under the foot of a Bastion unit. He’d kept the arm but the ring was torn from his finger when Reinhardt charged the Bastion out of a tenth-story window.

Jack probably should’ve taken that as a sign.

Gabe got him another ring once they got back to Gibraltar, along with a tiny but nice wedding ceremony to go with it. Jack still has that ring, it hangs around a chain on his neck, clinking against his and Gabe’s dogtags when he moves. It’s a grim reminder of everything he’s lost and everything he could lose if he lets his guard down again.

Because despite everything, Jack still has people to protect. Lena, who could flicker away the second her chronal accelerator gets damaged. Jesse, who looks as haunted by the past as Jack does. Angela, who still blames herself for not being able to save Gabe. Not to mention the new people that have shown up, the ones that make Jack want to shut himself away in the barracks because they’re young and stupid and making the same mistakes he did when he was in their place. 

He sees Hana and Lucio sneaking off to watch the boats. He sees Hanzo heading through the corridors with a bottle of whiskey to meet Jesse in his room, hoping to while away a few hours without their respective ghosts haunting them. They don’t know it but Jack sees it all, standing in the shadows and waiting, hyper vigilant, visor gleaming red in the dark. Anything to get away from the grasping hands of his dreams, tipped with metal claws, the smell of smoke choking him and reminding him of the cigarettes Gabe used to smoke after sex.

Jack knows what shape his dreams take. 

Reaper. 

He’s heard the rumors of the avenging spirit working to take out old Overwatch members. Knows that Winston and Lena have had run-ins with the man before. Jack also knows of only one man ridiculous enough to dual wield shotguns.

Gabe tried to destroy everything Jack loved back in Zurich. He succeeded when he dropped a building on top of himself. Now he’s back to do it all over again and Jack refuses to let this ghost haunt anyone else. Reaper is his burden to bear. So he’ll sit and wait and deal with Gabe when the time comes because Jack is responsible for creating the monster that clouds his dreams and it’s his job to kill it. Even if that means dying in the process. At least then Gabe might be content enough to finally die once and for all.

THE END


End file.
